Date and Venue: 7 March, 2024, 2pm-3pm, Arts Building 1.H020 (Humanities Research Space) 

Abstract: This paper is a condensed version of the first chapter of Dr Cardon’s forthcoming book, The World Awheel: Americans in the First Bicycle Age (Columbia University Press). It considers how the forces of racial capitalism and transimperial modernity contributed to the production of the bicycle at the end of the nineteenth century. The paper offers a ‘thick description’ of the bicycle as a technology through which one can trace multiple vectors of empire and exploited racialized labor. It places the production of the bicycle within a global network that connects places as divergent as the Connecticut River Valley, Brazil, and Trinidad. In focusing on a relatively mundane object this paper interrogates empire and racial capitalism as entangled forces that contributed to the construction of an everyday technology. A history of technology that is often ignored.

 

This event is part of the American Studies Research Group's Lecture Series.